Written Analysis

As an added task to your role as a paralegal in a law office or firm, you will be expected to compose a “written analysis” in relation to each case you had been involved with in terms of research performed.

Such a written analysis will put onto paper the process by which you went about acquiring the research for the case. It must be clear and concise and must contain 4 significant facts, one of which is that of the “issue” at hand.

The issue is, essentially, what the client’s concern is or their object(s) of contention. This is one of the most significant tasks that a paralegal must tackle in pursuit of creating an appropriate legal analysis. This is the initial step in such a process where the paralegal is expected to “spot the issue.”

This “spotting” will provide the basis for what avenue or course of action the research will take. Lack of an appropriate issue to begin with may lead to lot of wasted time spent on irrelevant operations. Ascertaining the issue is the majority of the journey that must be undertaken on the road to complete legal analysis. It can be the difference between solving the client’s problem and leaving them unsatisfied, which is not what they pay for.

Three components that comprise an issue include “applicable law,” “legal question concerning the law,” and the “key facts that raise the legal question.” Issues may then be divided into three categories of interest, which are “comprehensive, narrow, or specific statements” of it.

Comprehensive statements are those in which contains “specific law” and “key facts,” while narrow statements are determined based upon the narrowing of the “legal question” due to the existence of a multitude of facts.

When a paralegal goes about the establishment of the issue(s), they must identify both in terms of the “client’s case” as well as a “court’s opinion.” A few questions that you may also ask yourself include the following: what decisions must be obtained concerning what facts as well as what question about what exact law is pointed out by the facts present.

These allow for the concentration to be placed in the appropriate areas as opposed to its divergence in various aspects of the case. There are also couple of steps that will also lead to the adequate attainment of the appropriate issue.

These include: identification of each “cause of action” and affected aspect of law, determination of the components of the aforementioned cause, additional determination of what “key facts” will be applicable to the components, and final assembly of the issue from these preceding steps. Upon actual application of the issue into written analysis, you must go about its representation in the appropriate fashion.

Insertion of an adequate “topic sentence,” which will highlight or, at least, hint at what is to come in the subsequent paragraph, will be necessary. In addition, you will want to limit each paragraph to one issue. If, by chance, you require the establishment of multiple issues, you will need only to compose addition paragraphs.